(Image of Gearbox) Glen Litchfield wrote that book. A fantasy forest with the Forgotten Realm stretches before you, this beautifulness vista covered only by a colossal upturned soda can? This is a novel called The Tiny Tinas Wonderlands. Gearbox, where its purpose is to sell a game-within-a-game concept, is intended to be conceived as a roleplaying game in the Borderlands, both sitting around a table and inhabiting the second-imagined World of Tiny Tina’s adventure. It’s almost like an animated manga, but as a gift to be in the anime (and hopefully less of a game). To keep this end, Gearbox has found some ruins of the “real world” of characters from the Borderlands layer of the fiction as a barrier to fantasy world, namely the aforementioned soda can waterfall, slicing dice and imposing cheese-punch impediments. This idea inspired me to imagine a tiny world with shrink-ray of destruction, reminiscent of de_rats, ninja or the Legend of Zelda: the mini lukewarm. Gearbox’s upcoming sequel to Borderlands 3 will feature an independent edward with the best customs set of the country’s top developers, which builds upon one of the best customs, based on the rigor of the modern invention. I had the opportunity to sit down with the creative director Matt Cox, the artist Adam May and the designer Gabriel Robitaille, who was in charge of the project. All three made clear their desire to convert Borderlands’ looter-shooter gameplay loop into an old-fashioned, RPG-like structure, with the shooter sections plunging across a graphical world map with a resemblance to Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy. They want to make the real contrast between the more familiar gunfight and the overworld. It was very important to Gearbox to get it right. In the studio, we experimented with many art styles, including a watercolor, and a rad-sounding perspective. That resulted, as an irony, some usability issues, according to Cox. When you try to rotate the camera around tilt-shift photography, it makes you very sick! I had a bad taste the day I ate. Gearbox finalized the final game, with the same look as a high-end wargaming board with a more exaggerated style, including bobbleheaded, toy-like character models – than the pseudocel-shaded shooter levels. Since the map’s travel section doesn’t just feature an elegant aesthetic, the travel sections also will shake up Borderlands’ old-world concept of vehicles. Cox was so polite about specifics, but was seemed to suggest actions within levels would alter the overworld and add an element of reactivity to it. Robitaille and May rated random encounters of JRPG-style on the map at the level of armed combat but escaped the resilience. It was easy to qualify these encounters, which had enticing rewards and would have high standards of agency in relation to whether players engage with them or avoid them. As for me, May also is one of the most interesting titbits of my understanding of the gameplay aspect. “We’re straight-up giant first-person maps that you can’t even unlock if you don’t do an overworld quest,” he said. They’re some of the best we have, so I want people to do side-sea quests. That definitely influenced my interest. I am a fan of the RPGs and Soulsbornes. The work is very expensive in nature. That, and the other additions called Gearbox, suggest to me that a well-established looter-shooter formula like Borderlands could be about to see a refreshing change. Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands will be releasing in March 25th 2022.
